Civic Activities and Family Life
On June 6, 1865, Cheney married Elizabeth Stickney Clapp, daughter of Asahel and Elizabeth Searle (Whiting) Clapp of Dorchester, Massachusetts. The Cheneys had a son, Benjamin Pierce Cheney, Jr., and three daughters, Alice Steele, Mary and Elizabeth.
Cheney was a member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. He donated $50,000 to Dartmouth College, and in 1886 he presented a bronze statue by Thomas Ball of his friend Daniel Webster to the people of New Hampshire; today it is located in front of the New Hampshire State House. He also helped develop the eastern part of Washington state with a railroad line. As a result, Cheney, Washington, is named in his honor, and with a $10,000 grant he helped establish a school there in 1882 that evolved into Eastern Washington University.
Cheney was also one of the most generous supporters of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, after becoming a member in 1864. His property in Wellesley, Massachusetts is now protected as Elm Bank Reservation.
Read more about this topic: Benjamin Pierce Cheney
Famous quotes containing the words family life, civic, activities, family and/or life:
“Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Immorality, perversion, infidelity, cannibalism, etc., are unassailable by church and civic league if you dress them up in the togas and talliths of the Good Book.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)
“Unfortunately, life may sometimes seem unfair to middle children, some of whom feel like an afterthought to a brilliant older sibling and unable to captivate the family’s attention like the darling baby. Yet the middle position offers great training for the real world of lowered expectations, negotiation, and compromise. Middle children who often must break the mold set by an older sibling may thereby learn to challenge family values and seek their own identity.”
—Marianne E. Neifert (20th century)
“Women generally should be taught that the rough life men must needs lead, in order to be healthy, useful and manly men, would preclude the possibility of a great degree of physical perfection, especially in color. It is not a bad reflection to know that in all probability the human animal has endowments enough without aspiring to be the beauty of all creation as well as the ruler.”
—Caroline Nichols Churchill (1833–?)